Scarlet was a wonderful sequel to Cinder. There was so much I loved about this book. The characters were brilliant and each had an easily identifiable voice. Seeing the juxtaposition of Scarlet's brash temper and Cinder's calmer plotting as the book switched focus between the two was a fresh change from all the books that have main characters sound like copies of each other. Thorne was easily my favorite character of the novel, though, with his blundering cluelessness and cheerfully lawless attitude. The plot of this book was both smaller and larger in scope than the last one, and I'm not really sure if it worked. It was fun as hell while I was in the middle of it, but on the other hand, I feel like the story of the series, as opposed to the book itself, didn't get furthered very much. Most of the conflict and mysteries were centered on the pasts and abilities of the two main girls. While we learn a lot about each, at the end of the book, we're pretty much in the same position as we were at the start. The only real change is that the whole cast is together instead of looking for each other. But while that main story is going on, there's also some world-wide serious shit going down...which gets wrapped up neatly and set aside at the end. There's plenty of things that are set up to explode later on in the series, but for this book, they felt more like a stall than a continuation of the storyline. In spite of that, it's a really interesting stall, so I hardly felt like my time was wasted reading it. There was one point at the end that made me WTF pretty hard, though. Kai has to agree to marry Levana in order to resolve some conflict. So he gets on TV and explicitly states "I've been strong-armed into marrying her even though I don't want to, so that sucks." Diplomacy, Kai. You need to learn some. Also, the epidemic from Cinder? Yeah, barely mentioned in this one, dropped in favor of another looming threat.On the whole, a good book, but not for people who don't care about back-stories. If you're looking for an advancement of the series plot, might have to wait for the next installment.
